Tania Carver: The Creeper

Phil gave him a quick glance. The DS was unzipping his blue suit, pulling his shirt away from his chest to allow air to circulate. Mickey Philips was a burly, rugby-playing type. Stocky and muscled, like a shaved and domesticated bull. He was dressed like every policeman was supposed to be. Well-cut – but not flashy – suit. Polished shoes. Short, spiky haircut. Cufflinks, even. Under his paper suit, Phil looked the opposite. And deliberately so. Jeans. Superdry trainers. An untucked, flowered shirt with a suit jacket over the top. Hair spiked and quiffed. When he had graduated from uniform and joined the Major Incident Squad he had been adamant he wouldn’t be swapping one uniform for another. And he had stuck to his word. In fact, he was well dressed by his usual standards.

DS Rose Martin came over to join them, her paper suit dispensed with altogether. Phil got his first real look at her. Tall and big-boned yet fit and lean, her straight black hair was cut into a long bob with a fringe resting below her eyebrows. And with her jeans, T-shirt, boots and designer-looking, collarless leather bike jacket, she looked like she fitted Phil’s work ethos better than Mickey Philips. But appearances, he knew, were deceptive.

Phil hoped there wouldn’t be tension between these two. He already had trouble with another of his DCs, Anni Hepburn. She had put herself in for promotion when the DS position needed filling, been unsuccessful and was consequently harbouring resentment about it. He had tried to call her, get her to join him this morning, but she had already been called out on another matter. He wondered whether she had arranged that deliberately.

He just hoped his team could put aside whatever differences they had and work together. They had to. It was his job to ensure that.

‘Right,’ said Phil, ‘before we start, any questions?’

‘Boss…’ said Mickey.

‘Yes, Mickey?’

‘Well…’ He glanced round at the boat, back to Phil. ‘I’m just wondering. I know I’m new here, coming from the drugs squad an’ that, but this looks pretty serious. Less like a one-off and more like a serial in the making, you know what I mean?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Well, shouldn’t we think about getting a profiler in?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ said Phil.

‘D’you know any good ones?’ said Rose.

‘One or two,’ said Phil. ‘One in particular.’

‘Worth a call?’ said Mickey.

Phil became thoughtful. Marina Esposito was the best profiler he had ever worked with. She was also his partner. His soulmate. The mother of his child. And the cause of his problems he had tried not to bring to work with him that morning. Right now she was distant. Hard to read, to talk to. Secretive, even. About where she went, what she did. Something wasn’t right. He would have to sort it out, talk to her. Work it out between them. It had taken so much to get them together, he wasn’t going to let anything pull them apart.

‘Not at the moment,’ said Phil. ‘She’s… busy. Anything else?’

They both shook their heads.

‘Good. Oh, and one more thing.’

They looked at him expectantly.

‘Welcome to MIS,’ Phil said.

‘Hi.’

Marina Esposito sat down in the chair provided, looked at the man opposite her. He was still, his face, his posture serene, in an attitude of listening. She gave him a small, tentative smile.

‘Traffic was awful,’ she said. ‘Murder coming up past the station. Everything rerouted, for some reason.’ She sighed. It covered up the awkwardness she was feeling. ‘But I made it. Wouldn’t want to miss our session.’

She was dressed in a long, black linen skirt, white linen top, jewellery. Large-lensed sunglasses pushed up on the top of her thick, dark, curly hair. It felt good to be out of the house. To get dressed up for something. For anything. Even to come here.

Marina pulled the chair round, positioned it the way she wanted. The windows were open, the late spring/early summer air and morning sunshine giving the institutionalised room a warmth and life it didn’t often have.

‘Right then…’ She sighed again. Then found things that needed doing before she could next speak. Physical actions that helped to compose her mind. She switched her phone to silent, rearranged the contents of her bag prior to placing it on the floor. Marvelled at some of the things she found there. Pushed her hair behind her ears, arranged her neckline. Pulled her top away from her chest, allowed air to travel down there, stop it sticking. Eventually, with nothing more to occupy them, her hands came to rest in her lap like grounded birds. The signal that she was finally ready to talk.

‘So…’ She glanced at him. His face was immobile. Waiting. ‘I’ll start. It’s been… OK. Yeah,’ she said, as if convincing herself, ‘OK. Josephina’s doing well. I’ve left her with her… with Eileen and Don. They love her. So that’s… that’s where she is this morning.’

Marina sighed. Words were tumbling through her brain. She grasped for them, clutching them, hoped she settled on the right ones. ‘I’m… things are going all right. Since we last… since our… since the last time I came to see you. All right.’ She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

She sighed again and a cloud covered the sun. The summer brightness was leached from the walls as they became grey and bleak and the room became what it was – an institutionalised, dying room.

‘No,’ she said, as if the change in the light had also stripped away her false brightness, leaving just a grim honesty. ‘Things are not all right. I mean, Phil and I are good. You know, good. We’ve got the new baby who’s just gorgeous, and the new house. So that’s all positive. That’s good. But there’s… you know. The other stuff.’

She waited for the sunlight to return. It didn’t. She went on.

‘The fear. That’s what they never tell you about. The fear. You’ve got this tiny little infant, this… human life…’ She clasped her hands, looked down at them as if they held her invisible daughter. ‘And you’ve got to, you’ve got to look after her. You’re responsible for her. You’ve given her life, now you have to help her to live.’

She unclasped her hands. Looked up. Back at him.

‘Sorry. You don’t need to hear that. I’m sure.’ Another sigh. ‘Because there’s all the other stuff too. All of… this.’ The words were starting to tumble out now. This was what she had wanted to say. Came here to say. ‘I can’t… can’t… enjoy it. Any of it. There’s this shadow. This… spectre at the feast, elephant in the room. Call it what you like, you know what I mean. And sometimes I forget, and I’m happy for a moment. Just a moment. And I can relax. And laugh. And then I remember. And it starts again. And I just…’ Her hands were out in front of her, fingers twisted, as if grasping in the air for an invisible, intangible solution. Her voice dropped. ‘Sometimes I don’t think it’ll ever change. I think that this is it. This is the way it’ll always be.’

She looked round. The sunlight had returned and with it warmth, but Marina didn’t notice. To her, it seemed suddenly cold. Not light, but dark.

‘And… I can’t live with that.’

She stopped talking. She waited for a reply. None came. Took his silence as listening, as encouragement to keep talking.

‘It’s my fault. I know that. Mine. And…’ Her hands started grasping once more, fingers wriggling as if to be free. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know what to do…’

She paused, looked down at her hands once more.

‘I just feel so… guilty… And I am. It’s my fault. Everything that happened, everything that went wrong. My fault. But I don’t know what to do for the best. I need… I want this hurt to stop. I need to know what to do for the best…’